Overview#
Jordan Brand is marking its 25th anniversary in the Chinese market by collaborating with Tencent’s Super QQ Show — the tech giant’s latest push into the metaverse. Users can earn virtual fashion and home furnishing pieces for their avatars in the social app, including exclusive and personalized streetwear items and sports gear. The campaign also engages offline customers who purchase Jordan’s China 25th anniversary limited-edition shoes, gifting them with cards that they can redeem for virtual pairs on Super QQ Show.
Netizens’ Reaction#
Chinese millennials and Gen Zers have shown strong interest in the collaboration, given that QQ was the most popular instant messaging and social platform in China. Super QQ Show is an enhancement of QQ Show, a service introduced in 2003 that allows users to build their own 2D full-body avatars. Local millennials, therefore, experienced digital fashion in its infancy when they were teenagers.
Meanwhile, Jordan enlightened Chinese shoppers about street culture in the late 1990s when it debuted in the market. With both parties delivering nostalgia, the hashtag #MetaverseAJ and its 50-second video drove over 20 million and 1.6 million views, respectively, within one day.
Verdict
Similar to Nintendo's hit video game series Animal Crossing, Super QQ Show allows users to dress themselves up and socialize in virtual scenarios using digital currency gained by topping up cash or completing designated tasks. In addition to Jordan, sportswear brands like Li-Ning and Vans are available there.
Super QQ Show offers another space for brands to experiment and tap into China’s metaverse. This is not only because of the platform’s social features, but more importantly, its parent company: Tencent is widely recognized as the most qualified local tech giant to construct the metaverse thanks to its solid digital ecosystem and extensive resources in film and television, games, and social media.
Still, Super QQ Show has limitations as users have to access it through the QQ portal. Moreover, netizens now consider QQ as an old-fashioned communication tool, with WeChat replacing it as China’s top social media platform and gaining 1.28 billion monthly active users. In Jordan’s case, the collaboration with Super QQ Show is a vehicle for nostalgia marketing. Yet, this tactic is not for every brand.
Elsewhere, tech rivals such as Baidu and ByteDance have invested in digital fashion by launching platforms like XiRang and Pheagee. As the number of Chinese metaverse apps surges, fashion and beauty players need to carefully consider which platform will help them reach their target audience.